ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Muslim youth engage with video games. It focuses on counter-narratives and counter-practice that allow piety and video gaming to co-exist, and thereby constitute claims to a viable Muslim youth identity. It seems that video game-play in itself may offer 'empowerment' to create new hybrid meanings of a Muslim identity, or at least to offer some 'persuasion' towards positive self-esteem. The chapter argues that the benign Arabian Nights gaming environment in principle allows young Muslims to find affirming visual representations of places and people that speak to them symbolically in terms of identity, and where they can play the hero in legitimising adventure/quest narratives. There is much anecdotal evidence that First Person Shooter (FPS) games of all kinds are just as popular with Muslim male youth as they are with non-Muslim male youth. In online rulings, various theological reasons are given as to why video games are haram.
